


outlook not so good

by spidye



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domestic, Drinking, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Meet-Cute, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-13 20:10:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19258336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spidye/pseuds/spidye
Summary: Carol is a good wingman. Good thing Val doesn't need one. (Until she does.)





	outlook not so good

**Author's Note:**

> this was a commission for [meg](https://twitter.com/spidervalkyrie)! it's just a short lil oneshot i was trying to keep below a certain wordcount so sorry if it seems a little thin. i enjoyed writing this and i love these girls sm
> 
> you can [support my ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/tiger) or [commission me](https://ko-fi.com/tiger/commissions) now!

Space bars are so much better than Terran bars.

Carol learned that within her first week of patrolling space. For one, there are fewer rules. Which means she can order a few more drinks and break a few more billiard sticks over people’s heads than normal. Usually, though, the latter isn’t necessary. Most species of aliens are polite unless disturbed, keep to themselves when drinking, and don’t cause the very specific _Terran_ sort of trouble in cantinas or bars.

Though most bars are dirtier — tangles of wires hanging from the ceiling, plasticups stacked here and there, various alien… _residues_... left on barstools and booth seats — Carol finds herself comfortable in them after her long hours of flying, patrolling, and fighting. Certainly more relaxed than she would be simply returning to an inn or a hostel.

If there’s one thing Carol does enjoy, it’s the casual, arm’s length company of a stranger turned drinking buddy. Surrounding herself with people like her, the laughter and the smell of booze, the soft haze that’s only visible over their heads when dappled by the neon of two-credit arcade games or tune-cans. That’s where she unwinds. Where she feels at home the most.

Of course, it’s not the same without a wingman. Without Maria.

There are almost always tune-cans or jukeboxes, karaoke, and a few other bar games that, despite Hala’s rigid no-fun policy, Carol takes to with ease. She had never been allowed to go out without strict supervision when she was a soldier for them, and _certainly_ never to a dive bar or a cantina. Which means that barhopping is her favorite evening hobby. She remembers the name of every bar she likes, every bartender she befriends, and what fun bar-things said bar has. So far, the thing Carol hopes to find most is also the rarest commodity: a pool table.

Which means when Carol spots that familiar green-inset table sitting in the corner of the bar and hears the familiar _clack_ of ball against wood, _Pongo’s_ moves into to the coveted Carol’s Top Five Bars list.

The first step: she drinks and plays until closing. Beats everybody who picks up a stick. There’s something to be said about pool— it’s a culmination of luck and skill that’s almost predatorial. Methodically sinking each ball until she’s down to the eight ball, her opponent getting more and more antsy, knowing that she’s just waiting for the cue ball to get in the right position before she goes for the kill. Lucky for both Carol and _Pongo’s_ , her occupation in the quadrant takes her another few days to settle.

So she comes back again the next night. This time, she places bets. Doesn’t lose a single round. Same way the next night, until Pongo himself — a tall, lumbering A’askavarian — comes out and gives her a hell of a scolding for pawning money off his good, hard-working bar-goers. Carol apologizes and pays him twice her tab, which means that she gets a _very_ warm welcome the next night — Pongo laugh-shouting “Boyo Danvers! The usual?” the moment she walks through the door.

She had confirmed it with a smile, draped her jacket over her barstool, and headed right for the pool table while Pongo mixed up her drink.

Now she’s leaning on the bar, watching the pool table and nursing her drink. It’s occupied— a woman playing alone, against herself. Her hits are decent, but she’s clearly never played the game before. When the last ball goes in, Carol pushes herself off the bar and steps forward, expecting her to reset the table and go back to her seat.

She simply gives Carol an indifferent look and begins another round against herself.

Carol blinks away her momentary affront, brows arching. A few sharp words rise to the back of her tongue, encouraged by the liquor, but she keeps her mouth shut and leans back against the bar again and waits for the woman to take a few turns.

After a few hits, Carol says, “You want an opponent?”

“Not really, no.”

“How about a lesson?”

A snort of laughter. Her tone sours. “ _Definitely_ not, thank you.” The ball misses the hole and ricochets away, and the woman makes a quiet noise of disgust. Carol tracks the ball with her eyes, and when the woman sets up for a sure-miss shot, she pushes herself off the bar and taps on the table.

“Nuh-uh. You’ll miss that.”

She shoots Carol a disdained glance. “I don’t think I will.”

“It’s your trajectory,” Carol says, gesturing to the stick. “You shoot it there and it’ll catch that left barrier. But if you aim it— here. Let me.”

She holds a hand out. The woman stares as if Carol had asked for a hundred dollars, but Carol keeps her hand out, palm up, wiggles her fingers. Lifts her brows. “C’mon. You wanna win, don’t you?”

That does it. She relinquishes the billiard stick and steps just enough aside to allow Carol to take her shot. Carol takes her time with it, changes her aim to a different hole, and sinks the ball. The other woman has her arms crossed, watching.

When she’s done, Carol straightens up and turns to her, barely suppressing a grin. “You got a name?”

“No,” she says, flat. “Do you?”

“Carol.”

“Okay, Carol,” says the woman. She holds her hand out for the billiard stick. “Get your own and play me.”

Carol learns from Pongo that the woman is a Valkyrie, but even _he_ doesn’t know her name, and the Valkyrie avoids every question about it, so Carol dubs her Val and that’s that. Carol buys her a drink that night after they play pool a few times. That drink goes down in half the time Carol’s does. So Carol buys her another. And another. The fourth drink earns her Val’s contact number and a promise to meet her again here tomorrow night so she can _really_ school her at pool.

That was the second step. Now Carol has another reason to come back to _Pongo’s._

She can’t do it nearly as often as she likes, but she does come back. Once every two weeks, if she can— she weaves her way through the gently bobbing crowds on _Pongo’s_ dance floors to get to the bar, where Val is sitting, her hands wrapped around a bottle. The first few visits, Val is in disarray; her armor scuffed and dirty, her hair done up in a few quick buns, her posture slumped.

But when Carol plants herself on the barstool beside her, Val’s eyes light up, casting off the exhaustion and dullness that they’d had the moment before. After a few weeks, Val gets new armor. When Carol compliments it, Val wiggles her shoulders and gives her the most shit-eating smirk that Carol has _ever_ seen, which is saying something, given how many of those Maria had shot at her pre-flight.

And now the third step— it becomes a habit. If Carol’s not at _Pongo’s_ by the second Thursday of the month, Val goes out looking for her. This comes in handy once— Carol wakes up on Val’s scrapper rig, two IVs in her arms and a tube down her nose and Val’s concerned face hovering just inches over her own.

Carol, groggy and aching, had gurgled on the blood in the back of her throat. “Wha—”

“You were late,” Val interrupted. “And nobody else is good at pool.”

The fourth step. Carol rents an apartment just a short walk from _Pongo’s_. Kartos 9 becomes her makeshift base in the outer quadrant. She buys a couch and a bed and a holotelly and prints up two keys, one for her, one for Val. She thinks better of the key before she gives it to her, though — Val might take it the wrong way, could be a terrible flatmate. She puts that key under her doormat instead.

“You know,” Carol says once, “on Terra, the 8 ball is a.. kind of luck charm. You can ask it a question and it’ll tell you an answer, like ‘outlook not so good’ or ‘most likely.’”

Val stalls where she’s bent over the pool table and gives Carol a suspicious look, one brow lifted. The pool stick is idle in her hand. “Does it, really?” Her lips curl up into a grin. “What kind of questions do you ask it?”

Carol pretends to think, humming to herself. “Like— oh, I dunno. Will I get a kiss tonight?”

The grin turns kittenish. “Outlook not so good,” Val mocks. She turns her attention back to the ball and strikes it; it sinks. “Why don’t we bet on it? I win, no kiss. You win—”

“Oh, no. No,” Carol says, badly feigning confusion. “You got me all wrong, baby. You didn’t think I meant a kiss from _you,_ did you?”

“Well—” Val cuts herself off with a huff of air. Heat rushes to her face. “Who else was I supposed to think you meant?”

A sputter of laughter. Carol slides off the table where she’d been sitting and bumps Val’s body with her own. “I’m _teasing_ you! Relax, Val.”

Relaxing really isn’t Val’s forte. Sure, she can unwind when Carol was around— she smiles brighter, laughs louder,  is less sarcastic. But there’s always a layer of self control visible in her eyes, even when they’re glassy from the amount of drinks she’s had. Her hands stay near her belt and twitch if someone gets too close unexpectedly. She never lets herself get wasted— always keeps herself sober enough to run or fight or both. It isn’t lost on Carol, who, in contrast, is casually confident in herself and her ability to navigate through trouble. But there’s a precariously built machine under the skin of that Valkyrie, thinly veiled with apathy, executed with nonchalant aggression and borderline ferality. It’s a machine that’s designed to keep her alive, a machine that never, _ever_ stops running, even on her seventh, eighth, or ninth drink.  
  


Except tonight. Tonight, that machine is broken down.

At the bar, Val is slumped to one side, her chin propped up on her hand. The other hand clutches the neck of a bottle of some green-tinted liquor. Carol’s approach stalls a little when she sees Val waver in her seat almost imperceptibly. Carol’s brows draw together with concern. She moves a little quicker through the crowd, only drawing herself to a stop right beside Val, who doesn’t immediately notice her.

“Hey,” Carol says, cautious. She sinks into the barstool beside Val.  “Guess who?”

Val’s demeanor lifts at the sight of Carol. “Hey, you,” she purrs. “Took you long enough.”

Now that Carol is closer, she can see the drunken gloss over Val’s eyes, the subtle flush on her cheeks— she’s had more than usual. _Much_ more. But Val, either oblivious or enjoying it, is grinning, leaning towards her. Carol has to catch her by the shoulder and straighten her out on her chair. “Easy, slugger. You doing okay?”

“Oh, I’m doing _great_ ,” Val says. She chases it with another drink.

Across the way, Pongo makes concerned eyes at Carol, holding up somewhere around 13 of his various tentacles and appendages and then pointing to the bottle. Carol lifts her head in understanding. “Mhm,” Carol hums, “So— Val—- what would you think about some water, huh? Might make you feel better instead of the green stuff.” She squints at the bottle. “What even _is_ that? Rathtar goo?”

“I said I’m great.” Val twirls the bottle between her fingers, inspecting it with bored scrutiny. “Doing fucking amazing, thanks for asking, don’t need any water.” She takes another drink, tilting her head back enough that the rest of it hits the back of her throat all at once and goes down. She drops the empty bottle back on the counter. “—and it’s Centurion worm blood.”

Carol grimaces. “That... sounds tasty.”

“Yup,” Val says, reaching for another wine-sized bottle of it.

“Hey, take it easy.” Carol intercepts the bottle before Val can get the lid off. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

Offended, Val gives the bottle a tug, but Carol’s grip on it doesn’t budge. “I don’t think I have, no,” she says. “Let go.”

“Bite me. Why are you drinking this stuff, anyway?”

“Why _not_ drink it?”

“I’m serious, Val,” Carol says. Val stares at her, as if trying to focus on her— Carol, with her honey soft eyes, delicate brows puckered with worry, lips pressed into a thin line. On the bottle, her fingers are half-interlocked with Carol’s as she continues to speak.  “This isn’t like you. What’s going on?”

It takes Val a long time to manage, “Bad day.”

Her tone makes it apparent that _today_ was not the bad day— but this day a very long time ago was. The anniversary of something horrible. Carol can feel worry settle into the pit of her stomach, and she pulls at the bottle again. Val doesn’t relinquish, instead moving both of their hands to plant the bottle firmly on the bar counter.

“Well, guess what?” Carol says. Val stares expectantly, and Carol’s lips curve up into a reassuring smile. “Day’s over. You don’t need this anymore.”

Something shifts— something not noticeable to those passing by, but a change in Val’s eyes. As if too tired to keep her facade up anymore, it slips for a moment, and Carol can see a flash of pain, heartbreak, a brief moment of light that’s immediately sealed off and replaced with that same haggard look of unreadable determination. Val taps the bottle and says, hollow, “ _This_ is all I have.”

“No, it’s not,” Carol says. Even with the dull thumping of the tune-can in the corner and the chattering of conversations all around them, the two are focused only on each other, held together by their grip on the bottle. Val tries to pull it towards her, but Carol’s grip tightens, and the bottle doesn’t budge.

“It’s _not_ all you have,” Carol says, more insistently. “You have me, Val. Let me help you.”

As if the sun rising over a frigid mountain for the first time in a very long winter, Val’s expression relaxes gradually— brows unknotting, breath slowing, hand loosening on the bottle. Carol’s fingers move forward to tangle with Val’s, fully occupying them on the bar counter. Val sways a little in her seat.

“I have you,” Val echoes, staring at their hands.  

“Sure do. I got you.”

Val looks up at Carol sharply, studying her features, looking like she’s trying to undo some puzzle going on in Carol’s mind— figuring out what Carol’s gaining from this, what she’s playing at. But Carol, smiling softly, head canted to the side, just says, “Let’s go home. Get some sleep.”

“Oh, _fuck_ sleep,” Val says, turning away.

“I’ll order food.” That earns an interested glance. Carol pouches her bottom lip and leans in, voice turning into a playful pout. “Come _on_ , Val. Don’t make me beg to take you home with me.”

After a long moment, Val swings her legs off the barstool, which earns a victory grin from Carol.

“ _Just_ for the food,” Val warns her. “This has nothing to do with you or that face you do.”

  
As it turns out, getting an inebriated Valkyrie back to your flat isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do. Val is heavy and _very_ drunk — too drunk, Carol decides, for flying. Val pukes into a dumpster on the walk home and Carol is _very_ glad she decided against the flying. There’s a lot of staggering, position switching, bickering about whether or not Val can walk in a straight line on her own — she can’t — but finally, after a half hour of struggling, the two manage to make it to Carol’s apartment.

Once inside, Val goes straight for the couch, too exhausted to demand the food that had been promised. Carol grabs a few blankets to drape over her and then sits on the floor near the couch, scrolling through her phone. Retiring to her own bed isn’t an option— Val’s too drunk to be left unsupervised. Carol doesn’t really mind.

Val babbles incoherently for a while about home, about Carol’s eyes, about how boring her week was before Carol came home. The talking stops abruptly, and when Carol looks up, Val’s chest is rising up and down heavily with sleep, her limbs in a tangle, her mouth agape. The scene is the most peaceful she’s ever seen Val. Carol smiles to herself and takes a picture to set as her phone’s lockscreen.

Eventually, when Carol tires, she pulls over a few blankets for herself and lays down on the floor beside the couch. It still takes her a little while to drift closer to sleep, measuring her breathing, looking at the Asgardian asleep on the couch beside her. In her sleep, Val twitches, brows pinching together; she murmurs something and shifts. Her hand falls from the couch, and when it bumps Carol’s arm, Val’s fingers instinctively grip at her, seeking something to hold onto.

As if scared to hurt her, Carol gently grips Val’s hand, allowing a slow exhale. Goosebumps travel up her arm and send a shiver down her spine. Her skin is soft, and Carol runs her thumb over her knuckles in a slow, circular pattern.

“I’m right here,” Carol whispers. Val, though still asleep, loses the tension in her face; her body slowly unlocks with a sigh, as if Carol had chased the dream away.

Eventually, Carol dozes off into a light sleep. It’s only Val’s abrupt movement that wakes her up— she bolts straight up with a muffled shout, panting for breath, yanking her hand free of Carol’s in the process. Still half-drunk and hazed over by sleep and disorientation from the nightmare, Val swings her head from right to left, trying to figure out, “Where the hell—”

“My place,” Carol yawns, propping herself up on her elbow. She rubs her eye with a knuckle and smacks her lips, peering up at Val sleepily. “You okay?”

Val stares at Carol, with her hair all disheveled, and her blankets pooled around her waist. She blinks herself out of her reverie, but her vision is still hazed from leftover liquor and her words still sound slurred. The nightmare is still fresh, and somehow, when Val looks at Carol, she’s not sure if this one is real or just a figment of her imagination.

“I— yeah,” she pauses, “just a nightmare.”

“Mm.” Carol pats the floor beside her. “Come down here.”

There’s no hesitation. Val clambers off the couch in a second — well, it’s closer to _falls_ off the couch, but the end result of being on the floor is the same. She crawls beneath Carol’s blanket, expertly tucking her arms around Carol’s waist, but groans when her skin touches the hardwood floor. “Fuck are you asleep down here for? Floor’s _cold._ ”

“Didn’t want you to be alone.”

With Carol’s arms securely around her, Val’s body eases its jittering, but doesn’t relent entirely. She’s still struggling for breath. Carol cards her fingers through Val’s hair. “You gonna make it, champ?”

“Outlook not so good,” Val murmurs.

“Oh, big baby,” Carol laughs. “You’re alright. I got you.”

When Val’s tremors don’t stop, Carol’s entire body starts to brighten, starting from her hair and moving downwards. It’s carefully controlled— nowhere near enough power to be damaging, but it’s certainly warm. Val shivers gratefully in Carol’s arms, but when she allows herself to relax, she finds that her body’s trembling has eased, too. The silence is filled only by the quiet sounds of Carol’s aura.

They stay like this, tangled together, for a long time before Val says, “D’you know something, glowy?”

“Hm?”

“I asked that eight ball something.”

“Yeah? What’d it say?”

Sleepily, Val presses her lips to Carol’s cheek. “The outlook’s better with you.”


End file.
